The G&T programs aim to provide extra services for students with high aptitude who could get bored in regular classroom settings. Some describe it as a form of special education. Parents must sign up their children for tests to get into the program by November, and children are tested in January and February. Read More »

The city Department of Education is thinking about scrapping a contract with Pearson PLC after the publishing giant said there was another scoring error on gifted-and-talented exams administered this year, officials said Friday.

The city said Pearson miscalculated students’ ages by assuming all students took the test on the same date. The test scores are highly sensitive to students’ precise ages because even a month can make a large difference in the development of young children.

“This failure to complete the basic quality assurance checks Pearson confirmed that they had completed is deeply disturbing,” city schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said in a prepared statement. “For this reason, the Department of Education is reviewing a variety of options including terminating Pearson’s contract.” Read More »

The test for admission into New York City’s gifted and talented public-school program has perennially led to nail-biting among parents. But this year, the anxiety has been ratcheted up even higher.

As the Journal reported last week, city officials have moved to revamp the test for acceptance to gifted and talented kindergarten. In part, the goal was to make the exam more inclusive of the city’s multilingual population by eliminating language. But another motivation was to make the exam tougher, since nearly 5,000 children qualified for gifted and talented kindergarten last year — double the total from just four years ago.

And that increased difficulty has sent some parents into a test-prep tailspin. After the jump, see if you have what it takes to pass the test….Read More »